res.Had Turgot been allowed to pursue his policies of free trade and lessgovernment intervention, France may very well have become Europe's first"common market" and avoided violent revolution. Unfortunately for Franceand the cause of freedom, resistance from the Court and special interestsproved too powerful, and Turgot was removed from office in 1776. "Thedismissal of this great man," wrote Voltaire, "crushes me. . . . Since thatfatal day, I have not followed anything . . . and am waiting patiently forsomeone to cut our throats."3Turgot's successors, following a mercantilist policy of governmentintervention, only made the French economy worse. In a desperate move tofind money in the face of an uproar across the country and to re-establishharmony, Louis XVI agreed to convene the Estates-General for May, 1789.Meanwhile, the king's new finance minister, Jacques Necker, a Swissfinancial expert, delayed the effects of mercantilism by importing largeamounts of grain.On May 5, the Estates-General convened at Versailles. By June 17, the ThirdEstate had proclaimed itself the National Assembly. Three days later, thedelegates took the famous Tennis Court Oath, vowing not to disband untilFrance had a new constitution.But the real French Revolution began not at Versailles but on the streetsof Paris. On July 14, a Parisian mob attacked the old fortress known as theBastille, liberating, as one pundit put it, "two fools, four forgers and adebaucher." The Bastille was no longer being used as a political prison,and Louis XVI had even made plans to destroy it. That made littledifference to the mob, who were actually looking for weapons.Promising the guards safe-conduct if they would surrender, the leaders ofthe mob broke their word and hacked them to death. It would be the first ofmany broken promises. Soon the heads, torsos, and hands of the Bastille'sformer guardians were bobbing along the street on pikes. "In all," ashistorian Otto Scott put it, "a gl...
